Savoy

2 comments

Cville Eye August 20th, 2009 | 11:43pm

It will just be something that will run out of funding down the road and the city will have to take it over at great expense. With all of the large parks in the county, why would anyone want to stuff into the east side of the park? Because neither UVA nor the county will come up with any money. Of course, Council will think it is getting something for nothing as with the YMCA and will bend over backwards to install a sterile botanical gardent in the park. After all, doesn't Richmond have one?

Lonnie Murray August 21st, 2009 | 10:52am

The Botanical Garden is a red-herring. The REAL issue is whether we should replace the golf course with some other use that would serve more people. That may be a botanical garden, or it might not.

I think Dave Norris said it best on his blog:

"[Mcintire]has suffered from a failure of imagination and as a result, only a tiny percentage of our population ever sets foot in McIntire Park on a regular basis. The eastern half of the park is reserved almost exclusively for golfers, who are several hundreds in number (out of a combined City-County population of 130,000+)."

Now as to Marlene's issue, while I understand her concerns about pesticides and herbicides, I think she also presents a false dilemma. Many botancial gardens are only slightly different than natural areas in their approach to management. In fact the main goal of most botanical gardens is not "perfection" as she claims, but rather conservation and scientific research. It's not fair to pick out one possible botanical garden model (i.e. Lewis Ginter) and assume that is the only option.